Simple is best!

We’ve been using Microsoft SharePoint for some time now, largely for creating e-Portfolios for our HE students. The SharePoint system is quick, fairly intuitive and allows you to customise content and add web parts as required.

After a recent discussion with one of our Business tutors another application for the SharePoint Blog template suddenly sprung to mind.

The tutor wanted a way to capture his students’ ideas on a particular topic, display them anonymously in real time on a screen in front of the group and then be able to comment on each as a way to stimulate debate and discussion with the class as a whole. The inspiration for this had sprung from a session the tutor had attending at the University of Essex iLab, a costly, high tech, purpose built environment for electronically facilitating creative thinking and problem solving online.

How would we create this in the class room using nothing more than the student PCs, the tutor’s laptop and a large LCD screen? Easy, we set up a blog in SharePoint!

The tutor connected his laptop to the LCD screen and accessed the blog I had created for him through SharePoint. He posted his first topic to the blog and then asked his group, sitting in front of their PCs to access the same page. The group was then encouraged to post their responses/comments to the topic the tutor had posted. All comments were set to be anonymous so that no one felt anxious that their response might be ‘wrong’ or their ideas judged unfairly. The tutor could then refresh the screen at the front of the class as the ideas ‘rained’ in and comment on them.

Essentially, we had created a simple way to electronically capture the students’ thought showering process.

Indeed, the tutor had found that by using traditional question and answer techniques it would generally be the same students answering his questions while other less vocal students or those of a shyer disposition rarely participated. Using the blog as a way to anonymously capture the students’ ideas gave the whole group the confidence to express themselves without the fear of speaking in front of the whole group or feeling the anxiety of saying the ‘right’ thing.

Simple…but effective and at a fraction of the cost of the iLab!